Sunday, September 12, 2010

The Highly Anticipated Indian Paintball Exposé

I've never played paintball before, and I certainly didn't think it'd be one of the experiences I would have in Bangalore. When the announcement was made in the middle of the day Thursday, I decided to try it out.

We left the office around 1:30 and drove for an hour to the paintball fields. We were instructed to wear long sleeves and pants. We showed up in varying outfits. Not wanting to ruin one of my precious few shirts, I went in a far too revealing t-shirt. We had someone play in sandals. Rahul, the organizer, came in slightly more formal attire. See if you can spot him.

The guy running the paintball business struck was more than a bit hilarious. He casually demonstrated how to shoot by picking out an extremely small target near an employee and fired away.

Me Did you just fire at that guy?Him*smirking* I'm a very, very good shot.

Some time later, a question was asked by one of our teammates.

Aarti Do the paint balls hurt?Him*smirking* It hurts...slightly more than a mosquito bite...and slightly less than a sledgehammer.

The Games

The total cost including transportation was Rs. 600 ($12.93). For that we had two games.

The first was bluntly named "DeathMatch". Two teams started at opposite ends of the field and ran behind barriers of varying heights whilst firing paint at one another. There is a scoring system for this, and our team won by one point.

The next game was more of a strategy game. Each team had a captain and there was a flag in the center of the field. The objective was to get the flag and put it on the other team's base without getting hit. As a twist, only the captain could touch the flag.

I was on defense for the second time, which definitely had its pros and cons. I was out of harms way for the most part, but I was also just standing. Go figure, I was hit in both rounds from far away...in exactly the same spot.

Fun Fact I asked if paintball was big here. When I found out it wasn't, naturally I inquired if this was the largest and only paintball company. It's not, but most close up shop after 3-6 months. Yuyutsa has been around for five years now.